Wednesday, June 13, 2012

A team of Iranian archaeologists has recently discovered 20 meters of a canal of the sewage system of Persepolis
in southern Iran. The team led by Ali Asadi has been commissioned to
carry out excavations of the sewage system to discover how the system
worked during the Achaemenid era, the Persian service of CHN reported on Tuesday.

The sewage system is located in the southwest of the Achaemenid city near the city of Shiraz.
The team dug down about five meters to reach the canal, Asadi said.
A number of stone bas-reliefs have also been discovered during the excavations, he added.
Asadi said that the sewage system branches off into many canals, which extend to the south and then turn to the east.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Saying that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals got it right, the US Solicitor General told the Supreme Court last week to reject the case of Rubin v. Iran.

Lawyers
for Jenny Rubin and other injured litigants who won a judgment against
Iran for its sponsorship of a 1997 terrorist attack have been trying to
collect a multi-million dollar court award by attempting to seize
ancient Persian artifacts located at the Oriental Institute at the
University of Chicago and the Chicago Field Museum. The Seventh Circuit
on March 29, 2011 sent the case back to the federal district court in
Illinois for review. But the Rubin plaintiffs instead sought review by
the nation's highest court. See here for more background

Friday, June 1, 2012

"The
order of the district court should be affirmed." That is the simple
conclusion written in the Harvard Art Museums' appellate brief filed
yesterday in the case of Rubin et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran v. Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard University et al. The appeal is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.